Last week I attended the ADA New Dentist Conference in the Mile High City of Denver. I was there to scope out the scene since Missouri will be the proud host of the ADA NDC next July 17-19, 2014 in our own wonderful gem of a city, Kansas City. Make plans to join me now!

What a spectacular conference! I get so energized by seeing these dynamic young dental professionals. Here comes the next wave and it's impressive. They are bright, passionate about their profession, and a good bit fun. And the conference was set up to capture these qualities. The whole first day was dedicated to leadership both in motivation and skill development as well as in face to face interaction with the current ADA brain trust. I was so impressed to see the whole ADA board in attendance and available.

One of my favorite sessions featured a mixed crew at a table. Each table had a New Dentist Committee rep and an ADA Board rep as the host. Four very relevant topics were discussed: workforce, advocacy, corporate dentistry, and business/debt management. With every change of topic, a new set of leaders would rotate to the table keeping the variety fresh and engaging. It's good to eyeball current and future leaders and here their stories. This was followed up by a pretty straightforward Q&A with all the ADA trustees. I really sensed the value and time commitment shown to the NDs.

Suffice it to say that while the recent Connect4Success was a great ND event for Missouri members, there are economies of scale and diversity that make the national conference quite meaningful. You'll hear me speak persuasively about this for the next year so just go ahead and block out the dates and let's show the country what makes Missouri a great home to dentistry.

The rest of the week had lots of networking and strong clinical CE plus plenty of social time. I'll blog about some of those in my next posts. But don;t just take my word for it, probe these ND attendees from Missouri for a more professional assessment of the conference: Dr. Dustin Burelson, Dr. Mac Darnall, Dr Jeremy Bowen, Dr John Copeland, and Dr Nick Hein.